Looking but not seeing

Occasionally we look for something that is right in front of us, yet at first we don't see it. This demonstrates how dominant the 'cognitive' aspect of vision is; how to see something is not merely to look at it — to absorb the light from it — but to recognise it. That is, to map the visual data onto some conceptual model that accords with the object we seek.

I was looking for the toothpaste on the bathroom sink. It took me some moments to see it, although it was in my visual field all the time. It was not my visual system that was deficient, but my conceptual attention.

This example might be used to show that objects do not exist in the world until they are conceptualised. Unconceived objects are invisible.

(A similar incident occurred when looking for the soap. I scanned the room, including the area where the soap was, but had already moved on when I realised where the soap was. It took a fraction of a second to conceptualise what I had seen)

(A further incident: I was looking for a tape measure that I believed to be green. I knew where it was but couldn't see it. It turned out the measure was actually yellow. Although I had looked at it several times I had not seen it because it didn't look like I expected it to look.)

Watching, not looking, at art

We spend so little time looking at works of art. Historically, audiences would spend long periods of time looking at paintings, almost in the way we now watch cinema or TV.

Contemporary art does not encourage us to look for long periods.

Strong art gradually reveals itself through extended scrutiny — we need to watch it.

The Projecting Eye

Some archaic theories of vision propose that the eye rather than being a receptor of images is an organ of projection — beaming images into the world. We are apt to dismiss this as naive since it seems to us obvious that light travels from objects into the eye and not the reverse. Yet if what we see is actually inside our eyes why do images appear to be outside us in the world beyond? Is it not the case that the appearance of the world is precisely a projection, not by the eye as such but by the combination of eye, brain and body in motion? In fact, what we see is not 'out there' at all, but occurring behind our eyes in the visual regions at the back of the brain. Nothing we see is 'out there'.

The Spirit of Modernism

Mondrian, Evolution Triptych, 1911

There are artists of a certain generation who proclaim their allegiance to Modernism, yet seem to follow only its appearance and not its spirit.

Modernism, in spirit, is essentially an occult movement (see Mondrian, Kandinsky, Malevich, and other major figures who professed ideas associated with theosophy and mysticism). Those who perpetuate only the formal appearance of Modernism without seeking to develop its transcendental significance are little more than mannerists. Great art must make a contribution to the development of human ideas; poor art simply reproduces what is familiar.

Two opposing functions of mind

The mind operates in two opposing but complementary ways:

1. it makes distinctions, separating things from each other;

2. it makes associations, connecting things to each other.

These operations seem to occur simultaneously, despite being contradictory. They seem to account for much of our perceptual, cognitive and emotional experience.

Upside down

...and kcab ot tnorf.

The forms of the letters, or the shapes of the words, are entirely unlike those we are used to. Yet they pose little problem for the reader.

Between the Transcendent and the Bestial

Salvador Dali, Metamorphosis of Narcissus, 1937

The human condition is suspended between the bestial and the transcendent. Dali depicts a dog snuffling in dirt, while above are shown the highest aspirations of humanity: intellect (in the form of a chess board), and beauty (in the form of a statue). Above that an almost angelic figure. The whole picture represents what we can glimpse but never understand. It is a visual signifier of the ethereal.

Zero equals infinity

• Zero is infinite, because nothing has no boundaries. Nothing has no limits.

• Zero is the sum of all positive and negative numbers. Therefore, zero is the equivalent of all numbers.

The challenge to the foundations of western metaphysics...

The Universe has no beginning (Oil on panel, 2o07)

The basic ideas upon which western metaphysics has rested for hundreds of years are subject to fundamental revision. For example:

1. We abandon the notion that anything has a beginning, or end.
2. We recognise there are no objects in the world.
3. We transcend the division between the mind and world (while simultaneously acknowledging it).
4. We acknowledge that it is in the mind where all qualities and properties exist while also recognising that the mind is the world.

I'm adopting one of the primary visual languages of western metaphysics (baroque, romantic and rococo painting) to generate images that are both bestial and transcendent. My paintings should visually manifest the challenge to western metaphysics.

Humans are not machines...

...machines are human.

Why do people look?

Why do people sit down?

Where are objects?

Where is the man in this image?

• Objects as such do not exist. That is, what we take to be discrete, localised objects actually extend indefinitely (both macro- and microscopically) in time and space. Objects are boundless (and largely empty).

• The boundaries (and qualities) we perceive in the world are products of our mental processing. In other words, they are not mind independent.

• Yet the mind is also a product and constituent of that same boundless environment. The physical mind is itself unbounded (being an object in the world) whilst at the same time being the generator of perceptual boundaries (which are no more substantial in the mind that they are in the world).

The Extent of Objects

The forces (light, gravity, heat, pressure, etc.) that act upon an object are also constituents of the object.